Myth WeaverFinally! At last! I started reading this series in Kindle form back in early Spring, then moved on to the website continuation, and it has dominated or outright replaced my other books ever since. But, today, I finally finished the last of the current online chapters. Time to clarify something here - I read a *lot*. Often, a book a day or better. This series took me so freaking long because many of the individual chapters were novella length - 40,000+ words. Even the shorter chapters tended to top ten thousand words. And there are hundreds of chapters. My best guess is the total series in on the order of eight *million* words, done at a pace of about a million words per year - which is nothing short of insane.
First, might as well post a link to the Kindle Version:
Now, given the length of this series, I can just barely hit the biggest highlights and toss in some commentary.
To start with, The Wandering Inn is 'Literary Role-Playing' - Lit-RPG. The foundational premise is that about a thousand younger folk from Earth, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five were magically kidnapped by a sort of 'idiot spell' and dropped into random locations on a massive fantasy planet. The populace of said planet are in the thrall of a game-like system - almost *everybody* has classes and levels, and as they progress, they gain supernatural skills and spells awarded by this system (which they are mostly ignorant of). And there are many, many classes - everything from Drivers and Runners and Laborers to Traders, Lords, Rogues, and multiple varieties of Wizards. One class category that is absent is 'Priest' - because, well, the Gods are dead. Long dead. 'Dead Gods' is a common profanity.
As per the classes, so are the races - there are about a dozen major ones - quarrelsome yet civilized Drakes (magically related to Dragons), rustic Lizard-folk (distinct from Drakes), Gnolls (friendly nomadic sort), Goblins (complete outcasts), Centaurs, Stitch People (sapient cloth golems) Selphids (a sort of parasite race that animates dead bodies), Half-Elves (elves proper being long extinct), Garuda (bird people), insect people, humans, and others.
The first few books revolve almost entirely around the exploits of a pair of young women taken from Earth. The first, Erin Solstice, arrives in a dangerous location, flees, then takes shelter in an abandoned Inn. She cleans the place up a bit - and a little voice in her head gives her the 'Innkeeper' Class. She goes on to befriend Drakes, goblins, and insect people (humans are almost nonexistent in that area) and later caters to groups of adventurers (there is an actual adventures guild, and a major, extremely dangerous dungeon is discovered close to her establishment - The Wandering Inn. The other character is Ryoka Griffon, a half Japanese girl taken from the mid-west. Being paranoid and argumentative, she refuses to accept classes or levels. Instead, she puts her pastime as a marathon runner to work delivering messages and small parcels (everybody thinks she is a member of the Runner class). That brings her into contact with a wide range of people and unusual beings, because accepts the more dangerous contracts. Worthy of mention are Aaron Blackwell, who landed in a wizard's academy and becomes a sort of magical engineer, Cara, the Queen of Pop, Geneva Scala, who'd just become a doctor back Earth before being dropped into an especially dangerous part of the planet, and... well, I'll stop while I'm behind, as there are literally hundreds of POV characters, many of them 'natives.'
Worthy of mention in the website version is the large quantity of art, mostly of Erin and other central characters, ranging from childish to damn good quality-wise.
That said... I have many issues with this series. It remained interesting enough to (mostly) hold my attention, but some things... members of the different races, despite their physical differences, acted and thought like humans - so much so they negated the uniqueness. American English as *the* universal language was another matter - apart from a few enclaves and scholarly sorts, English was *the* language used by *everybody*. I have some suspicions about that, but... Likewise, the classes had so many overlaps I wondered at the necessity of including them all.
I'll call it quits, at least for now...
First, might as well post a link to the Kindle Version:
The Wandering Inn: Book 1 - Kindle edition by aba, pirate. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
The Wandering Inn: Book 1 - Kindle edition by aba, pirate. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Wandering Inn: Book 1.
www.amazon.com
Now, given the length of this series, I can just barely hit the biggest highlights and toss in some commentary.
To start with, The Wandering Inn is 'Literary Role-Playing' - Lit-RPG. The foundational premise is that about a thousand younger folk from Earth, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five were magically kidnapped by a sort of 'idiot spell' and dropped into random locations on a massive fantasy planet. The populace of said planet are in the thrall of a game-like system - almost *everybody* has classes and levels, and as they progress, they gain supernatural skills and spells awarded by this system (which they are mostly ignorant of). And there are many, many classes - everything from Drivers and Runners and Laborers to Traders, Lords, Rogues, and multiple varieties of Wizards. One class category that is absent is 'Priest' - because, well, the Gods are dead. Long dead. 'Dead Gods' is a common profanity.
As per the classes, so are the races - there are about a dozen major ones - quarrelsome yet civilized Drakes (magically related to Dragons), rustic Lizard-folk (distinct from Drakes), Gnolls (friendly nomadic sort), Goblins (complete outcasts), Centaurs, Stitch People (sapient cloth golems) Selphids (a sort of parasite race that animates dead bodies), Half-Elves (elves proper being long extinct), Garuda (bird people), insect people, humans, and others.
The first few books revolve almost entirely around the exploits of a pair of young women taken from Earth. The first, Erin Solstice, arrives in a dangerous location, flees, then takes shelter in an abandoned Inn. She cleans the place up a bit - and a little voice in her head gives her the 'Innkeeper' Class. She goes on to befriend Drakes, goblins, and insect people (humans are almost nonexistent in that area) and later caters to groups of adventurers (there is an actual adventures guild, and a major, extremely dangerous dungeon is discovered close to her establishment - The Wandering Inn. The other character is Ryoka Griffon, a half Japanese girl taken from the mid-west. Being paranoid and argumentative, she refuses to accept classes or levels. Instead, she puts her pastime as a marathon runner to work delivering messages and small parcels (everybody thinks she is a member of the Runner class). That brings her into contact with a wide range of people and unusual beings, because accepts the more dangerous contracts. Worthy of mention are Aaron Blackwell, who landed in a wizard's academy and becomes a sort of magical engineer, Cara, the Queen of Pop, Geneva Scala, who'd just become a doctor back Earth before being dropped into an especially dangerous part of the planet, and... well, I'll stop while I'm behind, as there are literally hundreds of POV characters, many of them 'natives.'
Worthy of mention in the website version is the large quantity of art, mostly of Erin and other central characters, ranging from childish to damn good quality-wise.
That said... I have many issues with this series. It remained interesting enough to (mostly) hold my attention, but some things... members of the different races, despite their physical differences, acted and thought like humans - so much so they negated the uniqueness. American English as *the* universal language was another matter - apart from a few enclaves and scholarly sorts, English was *the* language used by *everybody*. I have some suspicions about that, but... Likewise, the classes had so many overlaps I wondered at the necessity of including them all.
I'll call it quits, at least for now...
Minstrel
Auror
Maester